Jay Ryan

Kristin Kreuk and Jay Ryan are embodying iconic characters in this Fall's CW drama Beauty and the Beast, but looking at the cast on stage at their TCA panel, the question must be asked: how can the good-looking Ryan be construed as beastly? Ryan himself and the producers addressed that issue, while also talking about the show's relation to the 1980s TV series and how the relationship between the beauty (Catherine, a detective) and the beast (Vincent, a scientifically enhanced former soldier) will develop.

• A reporter noted that in the pilot, Ryan's character, Vincent, generally only has a scarred face and wondered if that took away from the original idea of the story, in which the Beauty has to get over the Beast's appearance. Exec producer Jennifer Levin explained that Vincent's beastliness is more on the inside, which "was more interesting to us." She said, ominously, that "the beasts in our lives don't always look like beasts," and Ryan added that his character is "more of a Jekyll and Hyde" type.
• Ryan and the producers expanded on the beastliness of Vincent's character, whom EP Sherri Cooper described as "a super soldier gone bad." Ryan says that Vincent has the DNA of different animals, like the vision of a hawk and the strength of a tiger, but if he seems a little tame in the pilot, Ryan assured us that Vincent is actually going to get worse, and "we'll explore why," said Cooper. In fact, Levin said that the fact that Vincent is getting more "beastly" will be the obstacle to his relationship with Catherine in the first season.
• Though Kreuk said that the Beauty and the Beast story she's most familiar with is the Disney film, the show is a pretty loyal reboot to the '80s series that starred Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman. The producers secured the rights to that show, which is why Kreuk and Ryan's characters have the same names, Catherine and Vincent. Kreuk said she even got a sweet gift of signed photos from Hamilton recently, which made her feel good "to know she's wishing us well."